


I know you (I saw you once in a dream)

by Anonymous



Category: Guild Wars 2 (Video Game), Guild Wars Series (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Gen, Pining, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-28
Updated: 2020-03-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:53:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23354236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: "Imagine Trahearne seeing the commander in the dream as part of his wyld hunt and searching for that person for 25 long years (who might not even have been born yet depending on your own pcs backstory).And when he finally finds them it’s in such a urgent moment that he can’t really process the fact that he finally met the person who is part of his destiny. Imagine the relief and reassurance, that the one person who will help him and fight by his side is finally there and he will never be alone again."
Relationships: Trahearne/Player Character (Guild Wars)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 65
Collections: Anonymous





	I know you (I saw you once in a dream)

He doesn’t remember much about his dream.

The details are hazy, faded at the edges like an old photograph, but he remembers what’s important. He remembers the shadow of a dragon’s wings lurking in the corners of his vision, the rattle of bones as the soil under his feet seemed to take a deep breath. He remembers whispers on the breeze, voices pulling at him and calling for him to help them move on.

He remembers a person.

They were there when he came to existence for the first time, as he learned to breathe, and that kind of memory isn’t so easily lost. He remembers their voice, warm and indistinct but so very familiar. He remembers the feeling of a warm back pressed against his, the flash of steel in the corner of his vision.

(And they were bright, so bright, and maybe it should have hurt to look at them- but it didn’t, and he misses them like he would miss a limb.)

* * *

It’s easy for Caithe to find her soulmate in Faolain, and some part of him envies her for it. For all he knows, the person he’s looking for is an entire ocean away. She only had to look into their own little home, find warmth in someone they all knew.

She smiles at him a little sadly, sometimes. He sees her lean against Faolain, their fingers intertwined, smiling into the crook of her lover’s neck, and he-

He wants that. He does.

(Faolain smiles at him too. It’s not a very nice smile.)

* * *

He meets her on his way to Orr.

He’s young, but she’s younger still. One day she’ll be untouchable- grow into her dark blue wings and her veins of frost-there’ll come a day where she kills as easily as she breathes, all carefully poised grace and measured intent, and every breath drawn in her presence carries with it the promise of death.

But that is later, and this is now, and he’s still young but he knows how to fight- his body moves if he was made for it (and he is, he was.) He has her pinned to the ground with his staff, and she is still: watching him carefully through hooded eyes. She is not afraid.

He could kill her, he knows, but it’d be a shame to kill someone so young: he wants to see what she’d grow into.

(And maybe, just maybe, he’s thinking of that bright figure from his dream, of gentle hands that cupped his face and traced lazy circle around his eyes, and he imagines telling them he murdered a child.)

He moves the point of his staff away from her throat, and he earns himself a debt.

* * *

Spending time in the slow rotting corpse that is Orr does nothing to convince him that he’s a good person.

His goal might be noble, the cause he fights for righteous, but he knows himself. He knows that he wants Zhaithan gone so that the land he’s grown to love, rot and all, can finally flourish- the prevention of more death is only a pleasant side effect.

He’s doing the right thing for all the wrong reasons, but does it matter? He’s still doing the right thing.

(And yet and yet and yet, he does nothing against Zhaitan, holds his cards close to his chest and stays quiet. Stays silent and still, taking no action, paralyzed by the weight of indecision. How many lost now because he didn’t move? He doesn’t know.)

He digs his fingernails into crumbling stone walls and listen to the dissonant wailing in the distance, and wonders for the first time if being good is supposed to be this hard.

* * *

When he comes back to the Grove, he’s dusty from disuse and faded, a ghost of the sylvari he used to be. Being in Orr changed him, but he isn’t the only one different.

Faolain is gone. Riannoc is gone. Caithe… is still here, but smaller somehow, and the shadows under her eyes have grown. The saplings whisper about his crackled leaves and his dull glow, but no one says a word about Caithe’s haunted expression or the scars he can see when she pulls him in for a hug.

She smiles at him. It’s not a very happy smile.

(She had had it, and she had lost it, and he admires her a little for that. He can’t imagine losing the light of his life, the one that had been promised to him the way she had. He can’t imagine moving on from that.)

* * *

The first time he meets them, he doesn’t recognize them for who they are.

They’re small still, for all that they’re his height: he can see the hesitation in their stance, the nervous wobble to their smile. Strong, certainly, but he doesn’t feel a pull. He smiles at them and shakes their hand: thinks nothing of it.

But after…

After Claw Island, after the battle, when they’re huddled together in a ship with a dozen other survivors, and their elbow is digging into his ribs, he looks at them, really looks at them. They’re splattered with blood and they stare at the island they’re leaving behind with a grim expression but they’re beautiful, and their eyes smolder in the light of the slow creeping dawn, and oh-

(Oh.)

* * *

It’s so easy to fall in love with The Commander. They’re strong and kind and loyal, and they wear their heart on their sleeve, carry with them the sort of light he’d been chasing since he first opened his eyes. Now that he’s seen them for what they are he can’t look away, and it should be easy. He thinks of it with each careless touch, an arm thrown over his shoulder, warm fingers wrapped around his wrist. It should be easy, but the truth is that he’s just never been that brave.

(A brave man wouldn’t have waited: he’s reminded of his cowardice with every casualty, every soldier fallen against Zhaithan.)

“Are you still working?” The Commander asks, and he blinks the spots from his vision. The tent is spinning and he can’t afford to stop, not when there are shipments to monitor and soldiers to command, but The Commander hauls him up like he weighs nothing at all. It sends a jolt running through his body. “Come on Marshall, it’s time to rest.”

“Wait-” He starts, but they smile at him softly with an ease that has his breath catch between his teeth. It’s late (when had the sun gone down?) but they glow in the torchlight and he’s gone, he’s doomed, his heart beating out of control and his fingers quaking. The Commander shifts him onto their back, and they’re warm, almost unbearably so, and it takes everything he has not to sink his face into their back and just breathe. Moments like this, it feels easy. Like his dream is just a step away.

(He’s imagined saying I love you to the Commander before. The Commander never did answer when he said that.)

He pretends to be asleep when The Commander finally puts him down again, but it’s a long time before he can go under.

* * *

Letting The Commander go is the hardest thing he’s ever done.

He knows they’re capable, and he knows they’re strong, but it doesn’t change the fact that he cares about them, and Orr is dangerous. He knows this firsthand. There’s only so much strength can do against death and decay, even with the Pale Tree’s Protection. He wants to ask them to stay; a part of him is sure that they would, if he asked.

To keep them with him would be selfish however, and The Commander is needed, their strength be a huge asset in the frontlines. So he swallows his words and tells them to be careful, sees them off at the gate with a smile that’s stretched just a little too thin.

Caithe is at the tent when he returns, and her eyes are almost unbearably knowing. “You did the right thing.” She tells him, and he wishes it could feel like a triumph, but all he feels is cold.

(Later he’ll find them, kneeling on a blood red shore by Zott’s body, and he doesn’t say anything. Not even when they rest their head on his shoulder and cries, not even when he watches them sleep by the light of the fire and wish he could have spared them this.)

* * *

“I do not understand why you do not simply take what you want.”

He’s long stopped being surprised when Sayeh appears, emerging from the shadows like she was made in it. There’s little left of the small child that once tried to drive a hunting dagger into his throat- he knows that if she tried now, he’d likely lose more than just a little blood.

(He’s been asked why he still talked to her before. He doesn’t know how to explain how freeing it is to be with someone who could care less about his purpose or right and wrong- to have an ally who sees the world in the same shades of gray, who he can share his darkest thoughts with without fear of reproach. Even The Commander can’t give him that. No one else can.)

“It’s not that easy.” He says in reply, and it’s the truth but not quite the full picture, and they both know it. It could be easy, if he tried. Take that one step between friends and something else.

Sayeh makes a noise. “I think,” she drawls, matter of fact, “that you’re afraid.”

* * *

“Why won’t you tell them?” Caithe asks. They’re alone and he half wishes they weren’t. “Isn’t it hard, to stay like this?”

He can hear the old hurt in her voice, the leftover scars Faolain left when she took up the mantle of nightmare courtier and molded herself to suit it. She would do anything to have her beloved back: she doesn’t understand why he would be content to let his feelings sit undisturbed, nursing a bleeding heart and bittersweet affection. He can’t blame her. Some days he doesn’t understand it himself.

“No.” He replies, because it’s not: because he loves them, true, and it hurts when they smile at him and he remembers that he has no true claim, but at least he has a smile to remember; at least he has a companion to watch his back. Caithe wouldn’t understand this, but he spent years in Orr alone with nothing but faint recollections of his dream to keep him going, unbalanced and off kilter, like he’s lost a limb. He has them now, and yes, he’s terrified, but they’re here. They’re here and that’s all that matters in the end.

“No.” He repeats softly, and thinks a little too hard of the way The Commander had looked earlier that day, glowing and bright and _there_.

* * *

The day he’s dreamt about has come, and he’s still not ready.

Purifying Orr is… hard. Harder than anything he’s ever done. The dragon fights him every step of the way, and it every drop of magic he has to wrest away control, send life pulsing through the previously dead land. It’s hard, and it hurts, and he can’t breathe.

The Commander is there though. The Commander is (always, always) there, and then they’re there with him, supporting him, telling him to breathe. He releases a breath he didn’t even know he was holding and lets himself lean against them unashamedly, just this once.

It’s over. Done. And he loves them, and at least in this moment, it’s enough.


End file.
